Last update 2/5/95  (or American = 5/2/95)
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This book is titled "The Nonconformist Register" and was compiled by the
reverends Oliver Heywood (1644-1702) and T. Dickenson (1702-1752) - see the
illustrations supplied as .GIF files for the front page.

The book was Edited by J. Horsfall Turner, and published in 1881 (MDCCCLXXXI).

This electronic version was produced by scanning the above book and using OCR
software (TextBridge) to generate the Ascii.  The resultant output was then
edited to remove errors by me (thrice).

All page boundaries are made plain by

 *************** page ****************

being inserted in the text.   All lines of text are as per the book i.e. no
formatting has been performed.  This means that there are the same number of
lines in this text on each page as there were on the original.  Some of the
typographical errors I have corrected and put a note against them but I have not
been consistant - this will be corrected shortly, and this readme file updated.
I have done my best to remove errors made by the scanning/OCR process, but see
below also.

In some cases, I have added notes in the text.  These are ALWAYS made plain by
the use of asterisks to mark the notes on each side e.g. **** note ******.

Please remember that the period when Oliver Heywood was making these records
was during the Persections (of nonconformists) - hence the two sets of records
which he kept (One as the official version, and the other (his 'Velum book with
one clasp' as the second (correct!) one.)


NOTES:
1. Words between { and } are in Italics in the book.

2. The word 'ye' means 'the', and 'yt' means 'that'.

3. During the period preceding 1752 (when the calendar changed from Julian to
    Gregorian), officially the year began on March 25.  Frequently in the book
    the months of January February and March are given as appearing in two years
    so for instance February will be given as February, 1661-2.  In the actual
    book, this takes 2 forms:
		  1. As above, 1661-2
		  2. As 166 followed by a half sign.
  Where a half sign is used (or seven eigths), this is given as 1/2 (or 7/8).

4. During the period of these records, a double lower case f (ff) was used for
    an upper case F (F), hence ffeb. etc etc.

5. Beware of jumping to conclusions that words used in 16xx mean the same as
    they do now.  A typical example of this is that no distinction in title is
    made between married and unmarried women (other than those married women
    whose husbands have died being know as 'widow' (or widdow, or wid. etc).
    Thus the 'titles' Mitris, Mtris, and Mrs all mean Mistress (married or
    unmarried).

			 -------------------------------

Having got as far as the end of Dickenson's Burials, my brain aches!!  There are
undoubtably a lot of errors left in the text, and any volunteers (in the UK)
to check all or part of the files against the original (or at least a photo-copy
of the original) sure would be appreciated  (e-mail address below, I am, despite
appearances located near Bedford in the UK ).  I will (slowly!) add the
remaining texts which take the form of indexes of locations and surnames - but
they are very hard going (and they certainly were in 1881 with no computer
assistance).  There are also some corrections given in the original book which
really need adding in the main text.

I also intend (when I find time) to add a list of abbreviations and the
modern spellings of various names/places (e.g. Huthersfield= Huddersfield etc.)
and at some point I may translate the whole into modern English and remove the
abbreviations to make the whole more machine searchable.

I should add that the information in these files is of no use to me in my
quests for information! - my mother just happened across the book in Hatfield
(Herts) - her interests are in the history of Yorkshire.  My interests are in
Hinson  (Yorkshire/Lincolnshire), Chapman and Hood on the East Coast of
Yorkshire, can anyone help, or anyone need help?

If anyone manages to extract any useful information, I would appreciate the
odd line via e-mail so that I know my labours weren't in vain!!   Anyone
requiring a gif copy of any particular page is welcome to drop me a line and
I will attempt to comply with the request, however if I get overwhelmed then
you may have to wait a while!!


  To follow:
	  Location Index }  These are really just to complete the book
	  Surname Index  }  and of little use if you have a computer.
	  List of Abbreviations
	  Modern spellings of place names
	  Modern map of the area.
	  Short description of the history of the times
  Possible: Modern language version.


					     Colin Hinson  (c-hinson@ti.com)
N.B.
This out of copyright material has been transcribed by Colin Hinson, who
has kindly provided the transcription to the UK & Ireland Genealogical
Information Service on condition that any further copying and
distribution of the transcription is allowed only for NON COMMERCIAL
purposes, and this includes statement in its entirety. Any reference to,
or quotations from, this material should give credit to the original
author(s).

Colin Hinson (c-hinson@ti.com) has given me his permission to upload the
Northowram Parish Register transcripts onto Australian Bulletin Boards.
Please respect his wishes concerning the commercial use of this
register, and from those of you lucky enough to find "relatives" in it,
how about a vote of "THANKS" to Colin, for the time and effort taken to
transcribe it.
 Beryl Thompson, Canberra. bthompso@pcug.org.au